Last week a primary mirror milestone was met for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope project as the first gold-coated mirror segment finished testing in the X-ray & Cryogenic Facility at NASA's Marshall Space ...

Prior to taking a new telescope into space, engineers must put the spacecraft and its instruments through a "spin cycle" test for durability to ensure they'll still work after experiencing the forces of a ...

A telescope will soon allow astronomers to probe the atmosphere of Earthlike exoplanets for signs of life. To prepare, Lisa Kaltenegger and her team are modeling the atmospheric fingerprints for hundreds ...

Volcanoes display the awesome power of Nature like few other events. Earlier this year, ash from an Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel throughout much of northern Europe. Yet this recent eruption pales ...

(Phys.org) —A massive backplane that will hold the primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope nearly motionless while it peers into space is another step closer to completion with the recent assembly ...

A critical component of the James Webb Space Telescope is its new technology. Much of the technology for the Webb had to be conceived, designed and built specifically to enable it to see farther back in time. ...

A short new video takes viewers behind the scenes with the MIRI or the Mid-Infrared Instrument that will fly on-board NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. MIRI is a state-of-the-art infrared instrument that ...

To mark UNESCO's International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009), six leading astronomers from the UK, the US, Europe and Asia write in March's Physics World about the biggest challenges and opportunities facing international astron ...

(Phys.org)—There are a lot of things that are hidden from our sight, and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is going to open up another world in the way we look at the cosmos. The Webb telescope is going ...

As the James Webb Space Telescope enters its next critical phase of development NASA and Northrop Grumman Corporation have forged an integrated, consolidated and "badgeless" Mission Systems Engineering team.

Mirrors are a critical part of a telescope. The quality is crucial, so completion of mirror polishing represents a major milestone. All of the mirrors that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope ...

The creation of the next generation James Webb Space Telescope was only possible as a result of imagining and developing the industrial machines that would make it a reality. In the near future, some of that ...